Monday, December 14, 2009

Using the new dungeon tool, I have successfully completed the group with 50 random pugs achievement.

I have been 80 what, 3, 4 days?

I am now rather decked out with sweet sweet tank gear. I dinged 80 and had a small cache of BOE epics to equip and start running dungeons. I didn't exactly have the confidence to tank right away, so I joined the dungeon queue as dps.

I had marginal success as dps. It was fun, because I got a chance to run with our other 80. Dungeons are always more fun when you have somebody to BS with. He's an arms warrior, which means he was after plate dps gear. With me being there as dps as well it pretty much meant I wasn't going to be getting upgrades for a dps off set, and only getting a shot at tanking gear if the group's tank didn't need the piece.

I did enough groups to get the tier 9 tank shoulders. With the current set of gear I had I figured I would TRY to tank something. Knowing full well that the best shot of upgrades I would get are from Trial of the Champion, I figured what the hell. The worst that can happen is utter failure infront of random pugs from random servers. Meh, that's ok with me.

Lo and behold! Success!

Don't get me wrong, it was a bit hairy at first, but I lived. Nothing gets the blood pumping like jumping into a new battle and not seeing the fights first hand. I mean, I'm anal about these things enough to search out the fights on wowwiki and youtube to see what's going to happen, but surviving it is another story.

With epic pieces dropping from the Trial of the Champion dungeon on a normal setting (not heroic - as you can only do each heroic dungeon once per day before you get locked out), it meant I had a good chance of getting major upgrades after each run.

Let me tell you..... I am now well acquainted with that dungeon. Very very well. I farmed it enough times to get EVERY piece of tanking gear that could possibly drop for me. After getting new gloves, boots, belt, legs, and a trinket, I was in pretty darn good shape to tank what ever came my way.

Yes, Sir!! I was feelin' pretty good.

I'm wondering what to do next and I see a LFM Onyxia 10 man come across trade chat and figured what the heck. I'll try it out. I raided onyxia back in the day and it would be fun to say hello again. I got the invite and everything was dandy. I start heading to the dungeon and see "Sorry, your gear score is too low."

Here I am, feeling pretty good about the new gear I have and wham, hit by the ignorance of the gear score.

I had been reading about this on tankspot and a few other places, but I had not experienced it before. Hell, I didn't even know what my score even was. Turns out I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3600 score. I had to download the mod because I was curious.

So, with my newly developed distaste for finding a raid group in trade chat, I went back to heroics. This time as a tank! Rawr! I had great success. I earned enough badges for the tier 9 badge ring, and the tier 9 chest piece.

So the warrior friend of mine and myself were lamenting over the lack of weapon upgrades. Here we were both sporting the titansteel mace. It's nice for a fresh 80, but trying to hold aggro against much better geared players was a challenge.

So we both decided to enter the heroic version of the Trial of the Champion. Again, success! Hurrah! No weapon... Boo, Hiss!

So, having successfuly tanked that, I was wondering if I could do the new dungeons. Turns out, yes, I can. I was well enough geared at that point. Boy are the new dungeons cool! Some awesome new mechanics. These dungeons are getting elaborate. How cool.

First time through the Forge of Souls and a 1 handed tanking mace dropped. Nice! Just the upgrade I need. Or so I thought. So deathknights CAN dual wield weapons and tank with them, just not tanking weapons, from what I understand. I had aggro control issues a couple times. It was not bad, but when a clothy gets literally one shot by the boss, things get interesting.

Which as a funny side note... We were in the Pit of Saron on the final boss. I'm up front waiting for the Scourge Lord to dismount his awesome looking skeletal dragon and fight like a man. When suddenly the Troll priest charges past me just in time for Scourge Lord Tyrannis to say hello. It was quite ammusing. It was one of those, "WTF was that, are you serious??" moments.

After a valiant attempt of healing by the ret pally, we ended up wiping when the boss was at 7%. Close but no cigar. But let me tell you... the next attempt the priest stay way the hell back, lol.

So to wrap up this suddenly great wall of text I got geared out over the weekend and for a 4 day old 80 I'm feeling pretty damn good. Best of all, I am now actually better geared than my paladin tank, who I quite despise.

All because the wifey had a cookie exchange on Saturday and a ladies crafting night (for NINE HOURS) on Sunday. Though I did actually miss the wifey this weekend I did get a LOT accomplished in game and that made me feel pretty good.